Tag archive: Italy

9 February 2012The next-generation B factory to be built in Italy will reach new levels in luminosity by employing the innovative crab-waist scheme at the beam collision point. The SuperB concept represents a real breakthrough in collider design. The low-emittance ring has its roots in R&D for the International Linear Collider (ILC) and could be used as a system-test for the design of the ILC damping ring. The invention of the crab-waist final focus could also have an impact on the current generation of circular colliders. Read more in CERN Courier
Category: Around the World | Tagged: crab-waist final focus, damping ring, Italy, Super B

Barry Barish | 13 January 2011Happy New Year! This is my first column of 2011 and I am very pleased to begin the year by reporting on the significant new investment in particle physics by the Italian government. The Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research has announced the funding of the proposed €400-million Super B project of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). The present plan is to site the machine at or near the Frascati Laboratory and to reuse magnets and other apparatuses from the PEP-II accelerator and the BABAR detector at SLAC in the US, both keeping costs down and enabling a rapid construction schedule, perhaps as short as five years.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: B factory, B physics, electron-positron collider, INFN, Italy, Super B

Perrine Royole-Degieux | 22 April 2010What do the ILC and environmental protection have in common? The answer is: superconducting cavities. The European MYRRHA is an experimental facility aimed to demonstrate the technical feasibility of nuclear waste transmutation in an accelerator-driven system. The main part of the accelerator will consist in a series of superconducting cavities. At INFN Milano, Italy, a group has transferred all its experience from the TESLA Technology Collaboration and ILC for the development of elliptical proton cavities for this application. Last month, a prototype cryomodule containing one low-beta elliptical cavity was installed in dedicated test stand at the IPNO/Supratech technological platform in Orsay, France.
Category: Feature | Tagged: INFN, Italy, Milano, MYRRHA, TESLA

Barry Barish | 16 April 2009Last week a major earthquake struck Italy about 10 kilometres from the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Gran Sasso National Laboratory). The inhabitants of the city of L'Aquila nearby the laboratory suffered numerous injuries and loss of lives, as well as extensive damage to buildings, homes and historic structures. (...) The Gran Sasso Laboratory, the most ambitious deep underground research facility in the world, suffered no significant damage, and for that we can be thankful.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Gran Sasso National Laboratory, INFN, Italy, LNGS

Barry Barish | 2 April 2009Last month I had the pleasure of participating in the "XIII International Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes" at the "Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti" in Venice Italy. (...) This year's meeting was especially interesting to me in how it demonstrated the relationships between accelerator and non-accelerator physics and how much closer astrophysics is becoming to particle physics.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Italy, neutrinos, Venice

Barbara Warmbein | 12 March 2009Susanna Guiducci has her head in the clouds – electron clouds, that is. (Sometimes she sits in clouds that gather around the Frascati hills south of Rome where she is based at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati or LNF, but that is not really relevant to this story – just very picturesque.) As new leader of the damping ring group, one of the key R&D projects in the ILC’s Technical Design Phase, she also has her feet firmly planted in electron-positron accelerator physics and has been working on damping rings for ten years. All that experience gives her a clear picture of where the challenges lie in the ILC damping ring design, but she is confident: “I am convinced that the parameters set for the damping rings are feasible.”
Category: Profile | Tagged: damping ring, electron cloud, Frascati, INFN, Italy, LNF, profile

Barry Barish | 20 November 2008Edoardo Amaldi was one of the giants who shaped our field... In fact, his impact on physics and society was far broader than his contributions to particle physics alone: they also include his scientific contributions and leadership in nuclear physics, gravitational wave research and astrophysics.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Amaldi, Italy, University of Rome

Barry Barish | 21 August 2008The Funding Agencies for Large Colliders held their semi-annual meeting in Rome at INFN headquarters on 14 July 2008. The meeting was notable in that it marked the FALC release of their first annual report and the appointment of a new chairperson, Pierre Coulombe.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: FALC, Italy, Rome